The functionality originally separately found in personal digital assistants (“PDAs”), cellular telephones, paging devices, and wireless email devices is increasingly being integrated into a single portable electronic device (“PED”). Research In Motion Limited of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, and PalmOne, Inc. of Milpitas, Calif. USA are two examples of manufacturers of such enhanced wireless electronic devices, and each offers a variety of products in this category.
Because of the myriad of complex functions that are offered in PEDs, it is important that users are presented with a user interface that is highly usable, to allow the user to navigate through various PED functions and access desired features. It is important that the user be able to easily ascertain the nature of the information and react appropriately. While efforts are made in existing PEDs to provide user-friendly interfaces, it is noted that in many prior art PED's dialog boxes that are presented in response to user input can present unclear information and be awkward or difficult for the user to interpret. For example, a dialog box that asks the user to confirm whether a particular telephone number is to be deleted may simply say “Delete!”, and offer a “OK” or “Exit” options. In this example, “Delete!” should be phrased as the question “Delete?” and similarly, “OK” and “Exit” should be rephrased as “Yes” and “No”, respectively. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that computing resources in a PED are constrained in relation to a full-blown desktop or laptop computer. Relative to larger computers, PEDs tend to have less volatile and non-volatile memory, smaller screens, and small keypads. Thus, the exemplary “Delete!” dialog box may consume a large portion of the PED display that covers the actual telephone entry that the user was trying to delete, and as such the user will have difficulty confirming the correct number is being deleted. By the same token, however, the desire to provide more informative dialog boxes is constrained by the limited memory and processing resources of the PED.